Rating: 4/5
Criterion Challenge 2024 | 33/52 | Anthony Bourdain’s Top 10
Bare feet run down the pavement at night. Christina, in only a trenchcoat, waves down anyone who will stop for her. Desperate, she steps out in front of a passing 1951 Jaguar XK 120 Roadster. Mike Hammer swerves to the side, his car unable to start. Christina jumps into the passenger side, and they drive off. The credits roll while Christina catches her breath. When her breath settles, she asks him to take her to the first stop they find in Los Angeles. But soon, they hit a police stop. The officer is looking for a woman who escaped a psychiatric hospital nearby. Mike acts as Christina’s husband to get them through.
Christina reads Mike—his car tells of how self-centered he is, how he takes and never gives. A car pulls in front of them. Out pours a gang of men who knock out Mike and take Christina. The gang tortures Christina until she dies (we can only assume based on her screams and the tools in the men’s hands). They put Mike and Christina’s body in his Roadster and send it careening off a cliff.
When Mike comes to, his partner, Velda, stands over him. As soon as he leaves the hospital, the Interstate Crime Commission pulls him aside to question him. They’re unsatisfied with Mike’s lack of cooperation but have a folder of information on the guy. Back on the street, he decides Christina is attached to something big. He’s going to figure out what that is.
"They." And who are "they?" They are the nameless ones who kill people for the great whatsit. Does it exist? Who cares? Everyone everywhere is so involved in a search for what?
Mike Hammer is the most noir name I’ve ever heard. His office has a reel-to-reel answering machine!
The film uses Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony as a motif for when Hammer approaches a discovery. It reflects all of the circuitous searching Hammer does, all the futility in trying to finish a job with no end. Love is right at his fingertips with the caring Velda, but his greed is incapable of seeing it. Hammer is a fatalist who only knows pain, given or received. When money doesn’t get the information he needs, Hammer takes immense pleasure in doling out pain. And every choice he makes gets himself or someone he cares about hurt.
This film is where Quentin Tarantino got the glowing case image from—the quintessential MacGuffin. The French New Wave, and Truffaut in particular, cite this movie’s manic camera and constant flow of energy as a significant influence on their filmmaking.
It wasn’t until 1997 that Glenn Erickson recovered the movie’s original ending, dramatically changing its tone. If you watch the altered version, the film is bleak and hopeless. The original suggests a tiny sliver of hope, however small. Glenn Erickson’s post about finding and restoring the ending is pretty interesting.
The movie has a terrific first act, a procedural second, and one of the best noir endings I’ve seen.